3 biggest disappointments of Hornets' season to this point

Injuries

There are no excuses for the Hornets being as bad as they’ve been, but still, the injuries have been extremely disappointing and they’ve marred much of the season, and it starts with LaMelo Ball. It’s incredibly hard to break out as a team when your star player only appears in 40% of the games.

Ball has appeared in just 22 of the Hornets' 54 games this season due to injuries. Hopefully, he will be back after the All-Star game and we can finally see him with his new teammates, but that has yet to be confirmed. This team definitely wasn’t going to be good, but they never really had a chance without LaMelo.

Then we’ve got the Mark Williams debacle. Williams got off to a great start to his sophomore season, looking like this franchise's two-way center of the future. But then he went out with a back injury in early December and hasn’t been heard from since. The latest report was vague, but just said it wasn’t career-threatening and he would be reevaluated in 4 weeks.

That doesn’t exactly sound like an encouraging report for a 22-year-old 7-footer - or anyone for that matter. It’s been over two months since we’ve seen Williams play, and at this point, it’s fair to wonder if he’ll be back this season.

Veterans like Gordon Hayward and Cody Martin also missed a bunch of games with injuries. But the two young stars being out for so much time has been the real disappointment. Not only did it derail this season, but now it’s preventing us from getting a look at the young core. It’s hard to even determine if Williams is a part of that core. 

I like what the Hornets have done recently and I’m excited about the future, but the rest of this season would have been a great opportunity to hand the keys to the three young, budding stars, and being robbed of that really hurts.